International. Microsoft shared the results and conclusions of its research on the Zero Trust strategy, from which it promotes its benefits, such as the generation of more resilient and protected environments in organizations.
According to Microsoft, the "Zero Trust has become a guiding cybersecurity strategy for organizations around the world" and defines it as a security model where the breach is assumed, so the state of security, identity, endpoint and network, among other available data and signals, is always explicitly verified.
In this way, the basis of the Zero Trust strategy is to repeatedly validate the information, as part of a protocol that combines attentive prevention with measurable processes, making human and technical factors strengthen each other, which closes possible security gaps between the two. In this sense, it relies on the application of contextual policies in real time, to achieve less privileged access and minimize risks.
It is worth mentioning that being a strategy there is no "formula" to be created or implemented. It will have different approaches, objectives, tools and critical points, depending on the organization in which it is implemented. Moreover, each Zero Trust strategy will respond to the specific cybersecurity needs and risks to which it must respond.
For Microsoft, "early adopters are seeing the benefits: organizations that operate with a zero-trust mindset in their environments are more resilient, responsive, and protected than those with traditional perimeter-based security models."
So, it's worth getting closer to the findings and conclusions of Microsoft's 2021 Zero Trust Adoption Report . Document that addresses the research in which more than 1,200 security decision makers were surveyed and interviewed in different companies around the world.
As an important fact, this research followed for a year the process of adopting Zero Trust in different companies, starting in August 2020.
Conclusions of the report
In its study Microsoft found several relevant conclusions. The first is that organizations are ready to capitalize on the Zero Trust strategy. Secondly, he realized that, in addition to implementing it, it is being a priority in all markets and industries.
On the other hand, it was found that a big factor driving this trend is that 96% of security professionals consider this policy to be fundamental in the success of their organizations. But only 76% of companies have this implementation, that is, there are 24% that are at the stage of considering it.
Another lesson learned from the research is that 31% of security professionals see the Zero Trust strategy as an important tool in the evolution from physical and conventional workspaces to hybrid locations. An imminent trend that has taken more strength after the pandemic.
The conclusion of this report is that the common position in organizations is to raise as their two main objectives the strengthening of security in general and the improvement of the end user experience. In this sense, zero trust becomes a strategy that simplifies processes for employees and allows the achievement of the objectives set.
Finally, this method of "permanent distrust" is relevant, since it forms skills in employees focused on prevention, attention and rapid reaction to cyber risk. So it is very likely that the budget for this will increase over the next few years.
